With the 29EA93 unpacked and set up, there are three main usage scenarios I want to test out: Daily use, Gaming, and as a video display. For daily use my main concern is that the wider horizontal space won’t be used as well as possible because applications don’t take full advantage of it, or that the vertical space will feel cramped. To help arrange your applications on the 29EA93, LG includes a utility that will automatically re-arrange your windows to be any combination of 2 to 4 on the screen at once. You can have two windows side by side, one large window on the left and two half-height windows on the right, or four quarter-sized windows. I found the side-by-side method works the best, in effect providing me the space of dual 1280x1080 monitors. This is right around a 6:5 ratio for the two windows, and most programs do a good job of utilizing that space.

Running a web browser and MS Word at the same time worked well, or Word and Excel. The nice advantage over dual displays is that with a larger Excel worksheet to deal with I can quickly resize it to the full screen, and then shift back to a split desktop once I am done, all without having a bezel in the middle. Dual display desktops seem to be increasingly common now, but there are certain things that two smaller displays can’t do as easily as one larger display can. Similarly, Windows 8's ability to dock a Metro application to the side of the desktop works well with the 21:9 ratio. You then still have what for most people is a normal width desktop, but you have another program running at the same time on the side.

It wasn’t perfect as a desktop display though. Since it doesn’t pivot, you have no way to increase the vertical space if you want to try to fit a whole portrait page on the screen. A traditional 27” display with a 2560x1440 resolution can either fit more of the page vertically when split, or can often rotate to display it in portrait mode. There is no way to increase the vertical space past 1080 pixels on the LG and for many that isn’t enough space. Additionally, while the extra width means that your entire field of view is basically filled with the display, that isn’t always desirable when trying to work on objects at the limit of your FOV. With a narrower monitor you might not have your whole FOV filled, but you might also be more likely to see a mail notification pop up, or clearly see both applications that you are working on at once. It’s a different display format, but for daily use I probably find myself wanting the extra vertical resolution for work.

For gaming, the 21:9 format is a different story. I think of it more as an alternative to Eyefinity or other multi-panel gaming setups, where one might not be able to have multiple monitors but still want that feel. When firing up a game that uses the full screen, it really does take up my whole field of view and feel more immersive. Whether this is due to the mental similarity to a large format film or just because of the wider angle, it does a very good job of pulling me into the environment. Compared to Eyefinity or a larger 27” monitor, there are fewer pixels to render, potentially letting me get away with a less expensive or powerful graphics card than those other options would require. I personally enjoyed it for gaming, and found the different aspect ratio to be a benefit here.

Finally, movies are what a 21:9 screen is designed around. Depending on what types of films you enjoy, you may have very few cinemascope films or you may have mostly scope films. Watching these on the 29EA93 there are two ways to view them and use the whole screen offered. First, you can use the internal zoom mode on the 29EA93 to stretch the image vertically and horizontally to take up the whole screen. Second, if your Blu-ray player or other source supports an Anamorphic stretch mode that you would use with an anamorphic lens, you can apply that here and then the 29EA93 only has to stretch the material horizontally. The latter mode would likely produce the best image, as typically only high-end players and electronics support those modes, and are likely to have a better scaler in them than in the 29EA93.

Watching Drive, the film was more enjoyable when freed from black bars that distract from the film at hand. For films I had ripped to my NAS I was able to adjust the settings in VLC to get them to play back cropped correctly as well. The main issue when watching films on the 29EA93 is now the size of the display, as it is fairly short though 29” diagonal. As immersive as it becomes to not have black bars at the top and bottom, you do find yourself wishing for an even larger image to watch from a distance. If you are mostly watching your films at your desk or very close to the 29EA93 then this will be fine, but it is too small for me to enjoy from more than a few feet way for regular film watching.

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90 Comments

The lack of 3D support seems like an obvious oversight, especially for a monitor that obviously targetted for movie and gaming use.I dont use 3D that much but I certainly wouldnt limit myself further by buying a monitor that couldnt support it at all.Reply

- Very few scalers actually work with a 3D picture. A Lumagen Radiance does, but that's $2000 to start with a basic model, and very few projectors with anamorphic mode support can do it to 3D. That would require a lot of extra power and push the price up. - If they went passive 3D (which LG usually does), that's introducing a texture onto the screen that many people, like myself, can not tolerate on non-3D content.

Given that adding 3D would push the costs up a good amount probably, I think it's a pretty easy thing to drop.Reply

I recently found myself in need of a new display for my computer. And I was very interested in this new model. But I was afraid that some games wouldn't be able to utilize it. And I also worried that the input lag might be intrusive. So I ended up settling on the Asus PB278Q. Which I'm happy to say is working out quite well.

I personally still wish I could get something like Vizio's Cinemawide TV for watching movies. But that will have to wait. However I commend LG for at least trying to fill this market niche. Its nice to see some companies that aren't afraid to take some risks.Reply

I agree with Chris that a 27" is a better choice, but as compared to a 1920x1080-monitor it makes a lot of sense. 1920 by itself is just silly to work with in most cases, 1920 divided by two is only 960, far from enough for two work areas side by side. A browser need at least 1024 pixels, but even 1200 pixels is often a bit lacking. 2560 divided by two is much more workable.Reply

Anandtech crowd is a lot smarter than the rest of internet. I read a lot about 16:9 vs 16:10 back then when it came and people made ridiculous arguments for 16:9 stating that it's good for movies etc (while no movie has ever been shot in 16:9).

If not for the loss of pixels I would vote for 16:9 but 1080 on these monitors is not much bigger than 1280x1024 what I had on my CRT 12 years ago. There is not really much more space on monitors, unless you get one of 1200 or 1440. I used to have the 27" iMac, it was nice, lots of space on the monitor.Reply